Tuesday, November 29, 2005

Why haven't the Weather Channel and AccuWeather started daily podcasts specific to user zip code that deliver video clips of the day's weather? When you wake up, your iPod would have the local forecast, satellite imagery, ancient After Effects and all.

Thanks so much for responding. I continue to be amazed at the speed at which discourse is capable in the maturing web (my guess is, you subscribe to a feed that monitors mentions of AccuWeather on Technorati (I would too)).

Anyway, I'm really happy to hear that AccuWeather is investigating content delivery via podcast to video capbale devices, the new iPods in particular.

Weather information is a interesting form of content, one I believe to be uniquely appropriate for direct-to-user delivery of this type. It's short form. It's visual. There is consistent demand from a large portion of the population during particular periods of the day. Because of the zip code infrastructure (and eventually GPS), content can be easily tailored to small geographic areas. There are many reasons to persue such a strategy.

I for one would readily watch a 15 second ad, or pay a yearly subscription ($9.99) to receive accurate and detailed local forecasts accompanied by both satellite imagery and animated graphics. Presently, I have little desire to see a meteorologist or other personality. Though I could see some portions of the market lost without a talking head.

Basically, what it comes down to is that there is a huge void when it comes to content I'd actually watch on my iPod. I've had it for well over a month now, and almost never use it's video capability. This isn't because the device fails to delivery sufficient quality. I believe it does. In fact, I think the video quality and screen are superb. The problem is simply a lack of appropriate content. I don't want to watch TV or movies on a small screen, I don't even watch that crap at home on my 27". What I want is information, conveyed visually. The small screen and frequent distractions associated with mobile video consumption simply eliminate narrative as a viable form for me. Give me visual data delivered to my pocket, and I will watch. Give me visual data custom aggregated to suit my personal information needs (delivered to my pocket), and I will pay.

I could go on. We are at the edge of a revolution in media generation and distribution, and the questions and answers that arise are hard for me to ignore. Glad to see that they are for you, and AccuWeather as well.

"Let your level show. Let the world know that despite having years of investment in your art form, you're still a beginner who doesn't know it all. Rather than hide your thought process, let your questions be present in your work. You are a fundamentally more interesting artist if people get to see what it is that you're struggling with, rather than just your final answers. Show your work." - Sven

Sunday, November 27, 2005

Until today, I scanned these stubs against Heather's primary notebook, closed. It's coarse grey bookcloth posed some moiring problems, but they didn't necessitate its replacement. Instead, one of my more recent finds, the 8863 with the single block-serif, was just too large to allow for a proper border. In its place, expect to see this black construction paper (upstate in origin), whose fibers seem to change hue from import to import.

I wasn't making a physical comparison to the hive form. Rather, I viewed these surveillant structures as the product of hives, or perhaps fixtures along the perimeter of hives. The word seemed appropriate to describe the shell of a collective intelligence made possible through technology.

I found the degradation of truth interesting more than anything else. I find it's important to remember that the internet is just one big game of telephone; fact WILL fall through the cracks; entropy IS unavoidable.

Thursday, November 10, 2005

"What I am doing in this process is basically what any curator does. Starting from my own subjective views of the world, I try to organize, to give meaning, to make sense out of the cultural production I'm interested in. I include them in my discourse, using them to pass a message. The choices I make have a purpose, they are not random, and consequences can arise from them. The practice of curating remains the same, only the context changes." - Luís Silva

there's nothing pointless about decontextualized quotation in and of itself. it does allow the reader to consider rhetoric or language outside the boundaries by which it was originally limned, but that's by no means a pointless exercise. indeed, it can be rather illuminating for the exact reason it can also trouble original authors: it dissolves ownership over a single meaning and invites the creation of new ones.

In fact, I think that the way in which I recontextualized your words is what makes this post function. By employing this particular piece of your post, and allowing the use of the first person to frame your language as possibly mine, I had hoped to define my blogging practice as a curatorial one; which I believe it to be. I was trying to allow my thoughts to come through your words, and for your words to seem like my thoughts. I was performing the function of a curator...

I might also add, that the very structure of both the web (blogs in particular) and the gallery is one of recontextualization. Curators have been experts in this field since the Renaissance. Quoting, both in print and on screen also behaves this way, and has for an equally long period of time.

In the age of linking at least, the reader is often offered a path towards a primary source, a primary context. I provided such a path in the post above (as I always do in my ongoing Quotations series), so that my readers could deconstruct the post for themselves, much the way that I have here, and in the process discover meaning.

I do not know if I have been successful, and am guaranteed not to be with every reader; such is the nature of putting work into the public sphere. I hope, after reading this explanation, my motivations and choices seem a bit more deliberate.

Thanks for being part of this discourse, your thoughts were, and are, appreciated.

I'm a little unhappy with all the noise in the image. But I guess I can't expect much more. I had just awoken from three hours of the kind of painful plane sleep that only Xanax and a 12-year Glenlivet can induce. The inch-think plexi between me and the sky was of course, also an impediment.